


Fanny Pack

by stranger_thanfiction



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Not A Happy Ending, Sad, Sorry to everyone, it chapter 2 - Freeform, literally this is just me word vomiting my feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 06:28:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20559746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stranger_thanfiction/pseuds/stranger_thanfiction
Summary: “Bill, how do I even make this happen? My manager dumped me, I lost basically all of my connections, like there’s no way we can make this work.”There’s some shuffling in the background, a bang like something dropped on the other side, and then the other’s voice comes through the phone.“Richie, I’ve got a guy at Netflix who handles the specials, let me call him and see what I can do.”He hangs up and calls Richie back approximately thirty minutes later; they have a meeting with Netflix execs on Tuesday.





	Fanny Pack

**Author's Note:**

> (S/o to the two comments who reminded me that I didn’t post this x)   
Credit for no-baths-for-Stan on tumblr for posting their heartbreaking headcanon that I ran with :( thanks Man! 
> 
> Also the 2 truths 1 lie thing is also not mine, but I can’t find the tumblr it’s credited to!

Richie wakes up the morning after his entire world collapses to his name #1 trending on Twitter. 

It’s not a good thing. 

For Richie, attention is never a good thing. 

#RichieTozierIsOverParty has been the number one trending topic on twitter for the past 24 hours; apparently, this is bigger than when Taylor Swift was over. 

Great, fucking great. 

He has 12 missed calls from his manager, and four from his publicist, but he really can’t deal with them, or anyone right now. 

Basically, Richie’s career is over. 

The Internet has always liked to speculate over rumors and try to connect the dots; if Richie hadn’t been so busy trying to kill a murderous clown and save the love of his life, he would’ve damage-controlled his conversation with the kid from the restaurant. 

Someone at the restaurant filmed Richie screaming at him, and then someone found the kid’s Amber Alert and missing poster. 

The general story is that Richie screamed at a fan so hard that he ran away and has been missing for a week. 

He reads this and throws up for the fourth time in the last three days, because he wishes that was the true story. 

He hears a knock at his door, and he looks up from his phone to see Bev, Ben, Mike and Bill at the door, their phones in their hands, sympathy etched across their faces.

They all hug just like they did yesterday, just this time dry and on Richie’s bed, and Richie lets himself unravel once more surrounded by his family. 

“We could’ve saved him, guys,” he sobs, and he feels Bill’s arms tighten around his shoulders.

“We could’ve Rich,” Bev starts, “but we didn’t. Bill tried, we all tried. We just now need to move on.”

Richie starts crying harder.

“I don’t know how to do that, Bev. I lasted twenty-seven years, but even twenty-seven days is too much. One day is unbearable.”

“Then we t-t-take it one day a-at a time. Time heals, R-ruh-richie,” Bill says softly, “I would know.”

Richie inhales, and on his exhale chokes out another sob. 

Time heals alot, but time also robbed Richie of Eddie, so time can go fuck itself right now. 

A part of Richie wants to let his career die off, just like Eddie died, and then maybe Richie can find some fucking peace. 

But also, Richie likes to survive, so he knows he’ll have to go back eventually. He just can’t right now. 

The Losers all stay in Derry for a while, disconnected from their real lives, and it seems like they’re all babysitting him. 

He smokes out on the fire escape with Bev, he goes on long emotional talks with Ben, he, Mike, and Bill find a way to have a memorial for Eddie and Stan, but he knows they’ll have to leave soon. 

Most of Richie is petrified of forgetting his friends, his family, once again, but a small part of him thinks forgetting Eddie might be better. 

His heart is burdened with everything that they never said, and Richie can’t stop thinking about the fact that their worst fears were a closet. 

Eddie had a lot to hide, too, and he didn’t even know it. 

He gets back to his home in L.A. around four in the morning, and he cries once more when he realizes he’s alone, again. 

He spends the day doing damage control, talking to his manager and letting his publicist put out a statement, but Richie knows that it isn’t going to be enough. 

He’s also crying, drinking, and not sleeping, but he figures he needs to get his finances in order if he’s truly going to be unemployed. 

Luckily, Richie was always smart with his money. There was always a voice in the back of Richie’s head, which he now acknowledges was Stan’s, telling Richie to invest. He’s got an income, admittedly smaller than the money he brought in from comedy, so he’ll still be able to live in his apartment in LA. 

Richie hates LA, but he really has nowhere else to go. 

Or so he thinks. 

He’s deactivated every social platform he has. It’s not even about the hate anymore, but rather the fact that he’d catch himself going through Eddie’s social media profiles and crying. 

It seems like that’s all Richie does anymore. 

He doesn’t forget, he doesn’t think any of them forget, and that makes the pain a little worse. 

Then Richie gets Stan’s letter, and he thinks he’s drowning. 

He hasn’t seen Stan in twenty-seven years, and is never going to see him again, and he sobs because his best friend was gone before they were even able to catch up. 

Losing both Stan and Eddie in the span of two days is too much for Richie. He thinks he’s going to cut his losses and give up permanently. 

He’s mixing his poison when Bev gives him a call. 

“Hey, Rich,” her voice still has her tell tale lilt, and he could cry again, “I’m just calling to see how you’re doing. We just got back to Ben’s house, and we found Stan’s letter.”

The dam breaks and Richie’s crying over the phone to Beverly Marsh, the girl he tried to force himself to have a crush on in middle school, and soon she’s crying too, because that clown will never stop fucking up their lives, will he, even in death?

His calls with Bev become weekly, and gives Richie something to look forward to. 

Slowly, he starts getting better. 

One day, when Richie’s watching a shitty 80s movie from when he was a kid eating cheetos in dirty clothes, there’s a knock at the door. 

He opens it to see Mike, bags in hand, a bright smile on his face. 

The smile dims a little bit when he sees Richie’s unshaved face and grey pallor, and his nose wrinkles a bit at the smell, but he asks Richie if his spare room is available for a while. 

A while turns out to be two months. 

Mike’s looking for jobs across the country, excited to see everything outside of Derry there is to offer, and Richie pities him a little because they really left him alone in hell for twenty seven years didn’t they?

“I’m not bitter about it, Rich,” he says one day he successfully pulls Richie out to try this new coffee shop, “for you guys, I would’ve waited twenty-seven more years if I had to.”

And Richie wants to cry again because his friends are the most loving people he’s ever known and they deserve the world, and he thinks maybe it’s fitting that the faggy trashmouth isn’t getting his happy ending. 

Mike catches him once when he was up from a nightmare, screaming for Eddie, and holds Richie as he comes to. 

“I loved him, Mike,” Richie sobs into the bigger man’s arms, “I love him and now he’s gone forever and I never told him.”

Mike just hugs Richie tighter. 

“It’s okay, Richie, I think he knew, and I think he loves you, too.”

They both start crying and wake up in Richie’s bed, but they never talk about it again. 

Eventually, Mike decides to visit Bill next, saying some bullshit about unfinished business and Richie’s alone again. 

Both Bill and Mike call, but the silence and loneliness of his apartment threaten to consume him again. 

It’s when Richie really starts getting the idea for a new special. 

(Well, that, and he watched _ Nannette _and bawled his fucking eyes out.)

He pitches it to Bill, who’s immediately on board.

“Bill, how do I even make this happen? My manager dumped me, I lost basically all of my connections, like there’s no way we can make this work.”

There’s some shuffling in the background, a bang like something dropped on the other side, and then the other’s voice comes through the phone. 

“Richie, I’ve got a guy at Netflix who handles the specials, let me call him and see what I can do.”

He hangs up and calls Richie back approximately thirty minutes later; they have a meeting with Netflix execs on Tuesday. 

Holy shit. 

_ Holy shit. _

He shows up in a suit, and to his surprise finds Bev and Bill waiting for him in the lobby. Bev’s in a dress, red hair perfectly coiffed and matching her lipstick, and has a file in her hands. Bill is in a suit that he’s 90% sure Beverly created, and Richie really doesn’t know what to say. 

“If they don’t want it, we’ll make it happen,” Bill says, all suave and confidence and nothing like Richie feels. 

Bev smiles and approaches Richie with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. 

“I’ve got a file of the offers from Hulu and Amazon Prime,” she says into his ear, and holy shit he loves his friends, because he didn’t even know there were offers from Hulu and Amazon Prime. 

Turns out, being controversial is just enough to make Netflix give you a comedy special, and its set in motion, with Bev and Bill backed as executive producers. 

_ Fanny Pack _is a title that both makes Richie laugh and cry when he comes up with it, and decides that he’s going to do his best with what he’s been given. 

In a whole, the thing takes about six months to write with Bev, Ben, Bill, and Mike’s comments, stories, coffee runs, and general picture gathering, and one night to film. 

Richie’s never anxious before getting onstage, not even now, getting ready to bare his soul to an audience of people that want him to fail. 

“I decided to go off the grid for a little while, and managed to fall off ass backwards,” he begins, “but it wasn’t for no reason at all.”

“My childhood friends and I had a little bit of a reunion, in our hometown of Derry, Maine.”

“Has anyone here heard of Derry?” he asks, and looks out in the audience to see Mike raising his hand. 

“Mike put your hand down,” he says into the mic, and the crowd laughs nervously. 

“No one? Well, great man that makes tonight easy, even though I’m afraid I won’t make anyone laugh alot.”

“Derry is a great little town, and we fucking spent our summers running around like jackasses. There were seven of us little fuckers, and they were my best friends.”

“They were the first testers to my jokes...it’s how I got the name trashmouth, because my jokes used to be shit.”

That line earns some chuckles, and Richie grins.

“We did literally everything together. Everything. You know how girls will go to the bathroom together because safety in numbers, or to like finger each other or something?”

Richie can see Bev’s wince from here but he keeps going. 

“One time, us six boys made fun of it, and Bev handcuffed us together for a whole twenty-four hours. We became closer, incredibly closer.”

“Men see each other’s dicks when we’re in the locker rooms, but it’s a whole nother thing when you all have to pee _ right beside _each other in an empty bathroom.”

This gains some cackles from the audience.

“It was like I was hit with some amnesia spell or something, because for the longest time I forgot about them, but coming back to Derry made all these memories rush back.”

“Of course, that meant that we hopped the nostalgia train and visited some of our old places.”

“If you didn’t recognize my friends from our old pictures, here’s a more updated version.”

Richie uses the clicker in his pocket to move the picture to the selfie they took in the Chinese restaurant, and he can feel his heart pang when his eyes drift over Eddie’s face. 

He goes one by one and explains his friends and their successes. 

“Let me tell you guys, Ben was a cutie before before, but look at him now!” Richie motions to the director, who pans to Ben blushing red like a fire engine, and Bev very sweetly brings his hand to her mouth and kisses it. 

“And now Bev and Ben are together and happy,” he smiles and clicks the next slide, to the polaroid picture Maggie Tozier took of him and Stan at his bat mitzvah. 

“I have two more friends that I haven’t talked about yet- the first is my Jewish god Stanley, who killed himself the week of our reunion.”

“Stanley was my best friend since kindergarten. We were never without each other, even when the bullies took Stan’s kippah and threw it like a goddamn frisbee and somehow it landed in a tree. I scurried my scrawny little ass up the tree to get it for him. I almost broke my fucking neck.”

“Stan really kept me humble, man, but we had each other’s backs, even over the dumbest shit. Like literally, Benny Boo made us an underground clubhouse, and Stan had us all wear shower caps so we wouldn’t get spiders in our hair,” he grins softly at the memory, and the audience chuckles at his joke. 

Richie clicks the next slide, and takes a deep breath, because the photo is of him and Eddie on the hammock, Eddie’s legs tucked into Richie’s side. Richie’s reading a comic and not paying attention, but Eddie’s focus is directed towards Richie. 

“In this picture,” he starts, and coughs to cover up the sob threatening to roll through his body, “is a guy who’s actually hilarious, who’s got a wit that moves faster than his tongue, a smile that could brighten a room. The other is the douchebag sitting in front of you.”

“This is Eddie Kapsbrak, love of my life, who we lost in an unfortunate clown accident.”

The audience is stunned to silence until someone from the front row begins laughing; it sounds alot like Bev. 

“No, really, Derry has copycat serial murderers who dress up like clowns and kidnap children. Read Bill’s book, it’s not fictional,” he lies, going over the Loser’s story so none of them get placed in the psych ward, and he knows the room doesn’t believe him. 

“Derry’s got a lot of fucked up shit, you know basic small town America shit like racists, drug abuse, abandoned quarries, and killer clowns,” he says nonchalantly, which brings a laugh from his audience. 

“I hope you’ll bear with me for this next hour, because we’re going to go in depth about where I’ve been and what I’m doing.”

“Let’s start with an icebreaker. You know those shit things the super peppy orientation leaders make you do at nine in the morning in college? UCLA had all kinds of shit ones, like 2 truths and a lie, 20 questions, word associations, and all sorts of things that made you wish you were hungover,” the audience laughs at that one. 

“So let’s do 2 truths and a lie. My nickname as a child was Trashmouth, my closest living friends are all incredibly successful, and I am bisexual. Which one’s the lie?”

The audience is quiet, and he steps behind the door. 

“I’m not bisexual,” he starts, and steps out in a glittery suit, “I’m gay, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first. Richie Tozier is a homo.”

“Welcome to Fanny Pack, my ode to my first love, and most importantly, the Loser’s Club.” 


End file.
